The Rising
by ainon
Summary: Xander and Faith face a long wait in a Cleveland cemetery. Warning: Character Death. Winner: The Lie To Me Awards Round 5 Loner Side of Sunnydale Award


**The Rising**

Summary: Xander and Faith face a long wait in a Cleveland cemetery.

Story Note: Futurefic.

Author's Note: Thank you, nemogravis and Ten Mara for the beta aid, with special appreciation to nemogravis forcare andculling attention. Here be vampires too, Ten!

Rating: T for adult language and use of profanity.

Disclaimer: Not belonging to me.

* * *

"Then he tells me that we need more time, we should just chill for a while and see how that goes. What kind of an asinine joke is that?" 

'Asinine' - now there was a word he'd never have credited to Faith.

"We've been together a year - more than a year - and he hits me with this crap. Why?"

Faith looked at him as she asked her question, and Xander Harris carefully kept his eye trained on the tombstone inscription just ... over ... there. She was perched on a tombstone belonging to a Meredith Redding, 1950 - 1999; he was perching on the neighboring Roger Walter Simonsen Jr.'s, 1945 - 1999. He was shivering wet and miserable. The light from the full moon was a clean white that made gray stone glow and gave empty branches icy sparkles in the tall dark graveyard trees, in effect of making the atmosphere at the city's largest cemetery creepier than it really should have a right to be.

And Faith was _still_ not moving on from this subject.

"I can't believe it," Faith said in the face of his stoic silence. "I mean, I can't believe it's happening to me. There were girls in the penitentiary who used to cry themselves to sleep because their lameass boyfriends dumped them and I used to tell 'em: 'Grow up! Quit bitching. No guy is worth it'. But now look at me. I'm not crying, I'm not crying over this, really, I'm not, but look at me. I'm talking to you. Of all people. I mean, no offence, but - "

Xander inclined his head in a way that could have meant anything at all. He was used to being everyone's Agony Aunt. He wasn't sure why anyone thought he cared, but he'd earned that sacred position of trust somewhere along the way, first in Africa where he was a UN aid worker by day and a Slayer-seeker by other times when he could slip away, and now here after the few weeks of being back on good old American soil. Where he was freezing his balls off. God damned Cleveland winter. To think that he'd actually been kind of excited about winter when he landed back in the States before Christmas. He cupped his hands and blew into them. He couldn't feel his fingers. He tried flexing them and nearly cackled with relief when he found they could still wriggle.

"I thought everything was going great," Faith continued, her hollowness a sorrowful echo of a dozen other break-up sagas. "We were steady, we were good together. No! Not just good. We were great together. We were amazing."

Xander sucked his lips in to suppress the urge to partake in some serious gagging.

"I don't think there's another girl. I'm pretty sure there's no other girl." Faith glared at him. There was no evading her this time. "Did he tell you anything about another girl?"

"No, Faith, he didn't tell me anything about another girl."

"So it's not another girl. So I don't know what's wrong. I mean - I don't know - is it me?"

Xander felt very much like hooting and shouting, 'Right on, you go, girl!', but he liked having his limbs attached, even if he was fast losing them to frostbite. Besides, if Faith wasn't seeing it, then there really was very little he could do. Faith had to light that bulb on her own.

"You'd sleep with me, right?"

Xander opened his mouth, recognized it as the rhetorical question that it was, in which case he didn't need to take into account their unique history together, carefully considered what he would say, then remembered that honesty - of some form or fashion - should always be the best policy in cases of heartbreak. On top of which, he could never be that good a liar.

"I would."

Faith pumped her fists in triumph. "There's nothing wrong with me. I've still got it. I mean, look at me."

He did, but she was bundled up in a few layers of clothing, a turtleneck sweater, jeans, and an overcoat, so there really wasn't much to see. A fact that actually made him want to sigh in disappointment, because, well, she _was_ Faith and there was much that was nice to see about Faith if she was letting you see it. But to sigh effectively he would need to breathe in deeply, and he didn't want that much air rushing into his lungs to freeze him from the inside out. He jammed his woolen skullcap tighter around his ears, shivered, and hid his hands in his jacket pockets.

"I'm what every guy wants," Faith said. A shadow of consternation crossed her face. "Right?"

"Every guy capable of an erection - with or without the aid of Viagra - says 'right'. Well. Straight guys."

"Yeah, yeah." Faith gave an impatient scowl, because that was so obvious. "So what's his deal, Xander? What's his problem?"

"Faith, he didn't talk to me about this."

"Fine. But you're a guy. What's this problem guys have with commitment? Fuck, it wasn't even like we were going to get married. I just said that since I was already practically living in his apartment then maybe Jacey and Lorrianne could take mine till they could find their own place. Just making my move into his apartment official. And he bails on me. Why?"

"You know, Faith, we guys may have the same chromosome combination, but I really won't know what his issues are."

"So he does have issues."

"Everyone has issues, Faith. It's just whether you let the issues control you, or ... not."

But Faith was beginning to see the light. "Do you think maybe it's because I'm a Slayer and his mother was a Slayer, and he's got this..." She made a face. "Mother Issue?"

"Oedipus complex," Xander wisely supplied.

Faith gave him a dark look. "What's this got to do with squid?"

He almost groaned. "Oedipus was some Roman guy. Maybe Greek. Long, long ago. Dead now. He kinda wound up sleeping with his mom. He was one seriously fucked up guy."

Faith looked like she'd just hit the jackpot in the sourest plum contest. "Fuck."

"Yeah. I said that."

"He's always trying too hard to show off like he knows things," Faith reminisced, in that way that Xander suspected would be slanted way too much towards the negative. Faith wasn't unlike other broken-hearted girls, there. "It's not enough that he's Senior Watcher of Cleveland, he wants control of all American continent Hellmouths. He's always having to prove something. Nothing's ever enough for him. Sometimes he's telling me off - _me_ - for just doing my job. Yeah - issues. He's got issues. I just never saw it."

"Love blinds you, Faith. It happens."

Faith seemed to be struck dumb by this concept. "I'm not that kind of girl," she objected, after the moment's pause.

"I'm not saying you are, Faith," Xander replied. For the lack of anything else to do as they talked, he reluctantly removed his hands from the protective warm cocoon of his pockets, pulled his backpack up from where it leaned against Simonsen's tombstone, and dug in to check the Sony handycam nestled inside. His fingers were so numb that he could barely hold the camera.

He went on, "You love him, he loves you, and sometimes you hit a snag, but then you pick yourself up and get on with it again."

"What if it's not just a snag?" Faith bent down sideways and scooped up a handful of snow. She was wearing thick leather gloves. Xander had been too preoccupied to remember his mittens; he'd remembered everything else: crossbow and arrows, battle-axe, bottles of holy water, spare stakes, super-size crosses, video camera and accompanying accessories, flask of hot coffee, energy bars, an apple each for him and Faith; but he forgot his fluffy mittens.

"Then he's an idiot," Xander answered. The Sony handycam battery was fine, the lens was clean, and the display screen flipped open and shut easily. The cold shouldn't affect its functions. Satisfied, he dropped the camera into the backpack; his fingers were too clumsy to grip onto it anymore.

Faith glanced at him, checking to see if he was just saying it, or if he was really on her side. "And you know this?" she asked, in a tone that was just a little too sarcastic to his ear. She was referring to his own very checkered past, no doubt, which while understandably tempting, was kind of a petty thing to do. After all, was he trying to bring up _her_ treatment of _him_ - when she unceremoniously shoved him out the door without even giving him time to get dressed? To name just one example.

He pursed his lips, but he knew she'd never be perceptive enough to even notice that he was offended.

Faith flung her snowball over Xander's shoulder, craned her neck to see where it landed, then shook the snow out of her gloves. "I just thought we had something. He was the first guy I ever ... I thought we had something."

Xander rubbed his hands together, desperate to try and get some feeling in his fingers. He suspected the only reason Faith was talking to him was because she wouldn't be caught dead talking to another girl about this - it wouldn't do to reveal the extent of her heartbreak. The gossip flying around about Robin and Faith had been thick and furious enough, especially following as it did on the heels of the other infamous break-up. But his habit of doling out the trickles of advice he'd picked up over the months died hard. And he was pretty good at this, really. People trusted him, God knew why.

"Look, Faith, maybe he needs time. Maybe he needs to think about just what this means, to both of you. He's got issues - he's gotta work them out. And when he does, and if he does, and if he's smart, he'll come back."

Faith was looking at him like he were the greatest thing since the scythe that sliced Caleb. Yup, Xander the Agony Aunt, the Comfortador of Sunnydale (now a crater in the ground) still had it. Faith started, "Would you talk -"

"No, I will not talk to him. It's not my place."

"I can't just be sitting around doing nothing!"

"No, _you_ talk to him."

"Jesus, why do you think I'm pouring my heart out to you, Xander? I've tried! He won't talk about it. He makes like it's some macho shtick, like he's gotta strut around and do his ... hell, I don't know. He's got problems but he won't let me in!"

Well, there wasn't anything to be done about that, then, was there? Xander stroked the tip of his fragile nose with his frozen fingers, touched his eye-patch out of habit, then tried to stretch in an effort to keep warm blood circulating. It was also a subtle hint to Faith that there wasn't anything more he could say. There wasn't much pleasure in stretching chilled stiff muscles while trying not to topple off a tombstone, on top of which he was still favoring his recently healed left shoulder, but he didn't stand up. They'd been here long enough that the seat of his jeans was soaked through, and he didn't want to find out just yet how cold cold could get. Why he had never tried to get himself a good, long, heat-retaining overcoat was a mystery he was going to spend the rest of tonight contemplating.

Faith, who wasn't even wearing a hat and was presumably more acclimatized to the elements - this being her second winter here - stood up, stalked to the fresh grave they were waiting by, and stamped her foot on the ground.

"Yo! Vampire, rise!" It was an almost theatrical performance. Xander wondered if she was mimicking someone in a TV show or a movie. Faith turned to him. "She's late." She stamped her foot down again, harder. "You'd think someone with her experience would know to rise early enough to avoid the sunshine on her first night of undeadness."

Xander checked his watch. "She's still got another seven hours."

"Well, I don't. I would like to get to bed soon, thank you very much!" Faith practically shrieked that bit at the ground. 'Over dramatic much?' Xander thought sourly. He couldn't help but look nervously around. Africa had taught him to be wary of moments when dead quiet was broken by noise - you never knew what might wake up and come over to play. No shadows moved, though. The cemetery was all theirs.

Faith returned to the handy seat the late Meredith Redding provided. "I'm a mess," she declared.

"You aren't a mess until you start eating ice-cream right out of the tub."

Faith's face crumpled.

"But the good thing is, it's not going to your hips," Xander said in a vain attempt at damage control.

"I'm never supposed to be the kind of girl who mopes around eating ice-cream. And the worst thing?" Her eyes were full of woe. "It was yam."

"Oh. That's..."

"It was the only tub available at the 7-11." She shook herself, grabbed more snow off the ground, and started balling it up. "I don't know why I'm letting that man get to me. He's just another guy. Why does it have to be so difficult?"

Xander wasn't going to attempt an answer to that. He rolled his left shoulder, trying to get the stiffness out. Well, at least he could roll it. He remembered how years ago, on that night that then led to quite a few interesting things - including his aforementioned half-naked expulsion from her room - Faith had popped her dislocated shoulder back in with nary a grunt. Didn't even put a dent in her groove. That great difference between Slayer and man. It took three days before he could even move his arm again after his shoulder dislocation got fixed.

Faith flung her snowball at something just behind him, and he heard the splat of it hitting its target. She refocused her attention to him. "You still having trouble with that shoulder?" When he nodded, she continued, "You're such a wimp."

"Well, I'm sorry if some of us don't have that patented super healing mojo," he snapped, and then caught the smirk on her face. Easy bait and he'd fallen for it. He offered a sheepish grin. "It's just that it gets stiff when it's cold out. I feel like this old geezer whose bones can forecast weather."

"Yeah? So when's spring due?"

"I don't have the aches fine-tuned by degree of temperature change yet. I'll let you know."

Faith cracked a grin, raised her arms up over her head and stretched, aping his earlier move but with far superior grace. Watching her, a stray memory came to Xander: sitting in the shade at a zoology research camp in the Savannah, watching a semi-tame lioness arching her back after waking up from an afternoon snooze. The zoologists at the camp had assured him that Sara the lioness was semi-tame because she would never think of the humans at the camp as prey; but Sara was only semi-tame because she could claw a chunk of flesh out of a guy's face if she thought he wasn't playing fair. Those zoologists - such a barrel of laughs. They were nice people, very helpful - served as his contacts so that he could get to the right girl. She'd been his eighth Slayer, the beautiful daughter of a gamekeeper in Botswana. Wherever she was now, he hoped she was safe. And he hoped that wasn't a fool's hope.

He jammed his hands into his pockets. He tried to look on the bright side. At least it wasn't snowing anymore. And the night was insect-free. If he were camping out by a grave in sub-tropical Africa, he'd have been savaged by a zillion mosquitoes already. Zipping, buzzing, hungry mosquitoes that would gift him with malaria and dengue - he considered how interesting life had become for him: he actually knew how to spell dengue. If anyone had given him that word just two years ago, he would have not only mispronounced it, he'd have also imagined that it was some kind Portuguese demon fish. If he'd even known there was a country called Portugal.

There'd also be the leeches: he'd be plucking off those bloated-on-his-precious-blood suckers right, left and center. Back to the insect catalog, there'd be that other favorite: the tsetse fly. Sleeping sickness was only funny when you were hearing about it while nodding off during science class. He'd learned to carry firearms with him at all times too, because demons weren't the only things going bump in the jungles at night.

He quit. His attempts to look on the bright side never worked. He stooped down to grab his backpack again, and almost lost his balance. He righted himself, forced his fingers to obey, and checked that the Sony handycam was ready, on standby, with enough battery power. Only the tenth time he was checking tonight.

"Is it just me," Faith said. "Or does the idea that we're going to be filming this make you feel like a serial killer?"

"Not just you," he replied, as he lowered the backpack to the ground. He resumed his sedentary warming-up efforts to save himself from hypothermia.

"Oh good." Faith rubbed at her face, but left her long hair to cascade over her ears and shoulders. With her gloved hands pressed against her cheeks, making her look like a small child expressing astonishment at the joy of snowflakes, she studied the grave and said, "Maybe she's not going to rise."

Xander groaned. "Don't say that."

"Father what's-his-name poured a hell of a lot of holy water."

"Father Grishom," Xander said, with a hint of irritation. Said Father was the only priest affiliated with the Council; the story went that some of the junior Slayers had actually been in the right place at the right time to save his life one evening when he mistook a group of hungry vampires for a group of rowdy homeless youths in need of guidance and compassion. Since Father Brian Grishom was the only priest associated with the Council, it should mean Faith could pay more attention to little things like the man's name. Anyway - "Yes, that was a whole of lot of holy water, but you can't go around saying that."

"What?"

"That whole 'maybe she's not going to rise' - that's like saying 'what else could go wrong?'."

"Well, if saying that helps her decide to rise now, I'm gonna call it and say it's about time."

Xander conceded that point. After all, if she didn't rise tonight, they'd have to keep coming back to check, and he really would like to avoid further nighttime outdoors activities, at least until Cleveland temperatures warmed up to a degree that was more hospitable to human life. A human born and bred in California, who then spent a year plus in Africa.

Faith exaggerated a sigh. "She's a prima donna, that's what she is. She's making us wait. I don't know how she knows, but she knows we're here, waiting."

"Maybe she's waiting for the holy water to dry."

"But I thought once you've consecrated the grounds, it remains consecrated. Even after evaporation. Not that there's evaporation going on now."

"Yeah, but I'm just remembering that we buried the Master's bones back in Sunnydale, and somehow those bones got dug out anyway. Giles did a whole lot of consecrating there."

"This deal here was done by a real Catholic priest," Faith said. "You can't get more consecrated than that."

And yet here they were, as near to 100 certain that their dead Slayer was going to make her vampiric debut.

Faith was still staring at the grave. "We could have just beheaded her and staked her and used up all our garlic to prevent this rising in the first place. But noooo."

He couldn't even work up a glimmer of righteous indignation because he happened to agree. Logically, intuitively, rightly. But at heart...

"She deserved a proper funeral," he said mildly, reminding rather than reprimanding.

Faith shook her head at him. "I know, I know. If this ever happens to me: off with it. Okay?" She swished a quick cutting gesture at her neck. "Off with the head, get it on with the stake, break out the garlic, burn me and spread my ashes into the lake. Or a swamp, for all I care. I will thank you."

"You're welcome," he replied, without much emotion. He didn't offer his opinion on what should be done to his remains. There was no worse fate than hostile demon-takeover, but his natural assumption had always been that if he ever got killed off by a vampire, that would precisely be the end of it. He'd be killed off. Never turned. He'd never imagined anybody would bother turning him. Not in this universe, anyway. But the situation was different now. He was no Slayer, wasn't a Watcher either, but he had enough field experience that if he ever became a vampire, his vampire self would have enough knowledge stored in the memory banks to know how to create some incredible mayhem.

Faith spoke, cutting short his morbid projecting. "So what was it like in Africa?"

He started. "What was what like?"

"Whatever you were doing out there. The way I understand it, you were recruiting new Slayers. But you're not a Watcher."

"Well, no. Because come on. Me? A Watcher?" He rolled his eye in disbelief.

"Well yeah, you - a Watcher. You must have hung around old man Giles enough to pick up a thing or two."

"Nah," he said. "I'm so not into the training stuff. And the teaching." He shuddered at the mere thought. "Nope. I just recruit the girls. They're out there, alone. So I did my bit, tried to find those I could." He dug his hands deeper into his pockets. He didn't like talking about this. "So ... what was it like for you and Robin, holding up the fort here in Cleveland?"

"We held up the fort, trained girls, whupped demon ass, had to go stop one near-apocalypse in Montana, of all places - it was only medium rate. No, we're talking about you. What'd you do in Africa?"

He was stalling, thinking of a way to get around the straight answer when she added, "I heard all the funny stuff over Christmas break. I'm asking about the real stuff."

He knew that. He had seen how she'd perked up the minute she thought she was going to get exclusive Xander information. He never pegged her to be too inquisitive about anyone else's business, but she, and just about everyone else, must be very, very curious about the things he wasn't telling. Sure, everyone liked his stories - the one about his life-altering discovery of how fast hippopotamuses were was a great hit. The junior Slayers were also very much in awe of the fact that he was the one and only adult in the Council who also happened to have a real life occupation with a description: United Nations aid worker posted to Africa. Apparently, Xander associating with people who did not devote their lives to Slaydom was a concept that was quite profound to some of the girls.

And not forgetting Sara the lioness - she was always a winner, any day.

Willow, especially, loved Sara the lioness. He'd told her about Sara on New Year's Eve, with a few colorful embellishments here and there, just to keep things merry. He was in Willow's room; just the two of them waiting for the countdown to begin - Buffy never came to Cleveland for the holidays, Dawn had flown back to Rome the day before, Giles had some karaoke gig going with his new girlfriend and fellow Watchers - it was just him and Willow.

He sat on the floor and she was on the bed. He remembered the attentive, keen look in her eyes as she propped herself up on her elbows to listen as he yakked, her brain whirring away, soaking in his words, filtering the junk out without calling him on them, making mental notations against facts that she had nerded on long before. The way she was that night reminded him of the Willow of their childhood: the Willow whose ambition was to become a scientist who would make spectacular discoveries and win Nobel Prizes. The Willow before she became the Most Powerful Witch of the West, who sometimes made him worry unnaturally that Very Bad Things would happen if she so much as sneezed wrong. A Willow whom he loved with all his heart but couldn't trust to not become his worst enemy if he ever so much as twisted a kink in her world.

But that night, she was the Willow he loved the most, and missed the most.

Big cat stories, who could resist those?

Faith could've been reading his mind. "I love cute kitties as much as any other girl, but I am starting to wonder about the real stuff that you never want to talk about."

"It's just that there was stuff. Questionable stuff. Things I had to do that I'm not proud of."

Faith shrugged. "That makes you different from the rest of us - how? We all do what we have to do. And it seems like a hell of a lot of the time whatever we do goes to shit anyway."

He shook his head; the things he meant weren't the same. Faith was a full-fledged Slayer, with the authority to do whatever had to be done, while he just chugged along, grabbing at straws here and there, improvising and lying and cheating his way through Africa. Holding down a day job with the UN, ostensibly helping the innocent, while on the side he would be tracking down girls whose lives and innocence had been altered by the release of a spell.

"Maybe you want to talk about it. Get some of the stuff off your chest." She tossed a scowl in the direction of the grave. "We have all night. We don't want to talk about why we're really here. I don't think we wanna talk about Robin again..." She gave him some time to think about that, and then chased that up with casual inquiry: "There was this rumor about a SlayerFest Africa '04, timed to coincide with the Olympics in Greece. Was that true?"

He gave her an incredulous look. She should be ashamed to resort to such lame methods to extract information from him. After all, he knew she knew. "You're on the Senior Council mailing list."

"Which you don't e-mail to. We don't even know what happened in the end. A group of us were standing by, ready to go to Africa at a moment's notice, and then Andrew called and told us that you'd sorted things out. Nobody had to worry about any more SlayerFest."

"Well, not for 2004," Xander said.

"Okay. How'd that work?"

Xander recalled the appointment he had with representatives of the SlayerFest '04 Africa organizers - a prissy vampire with a French accent named Beau, and a crinkly-skinned, muscle-bulging pink demon named George who did a lot of mumbling Marlon Brando-style. 'Appointment' was a bit of an understated way to describe the minutes of that meeting, though. He gave Faith the super condensed ratings-safe version.

"I negotiated with them, asked them to postpone things."

Faith chuckled at what she assumed was a joke, then realized that he was serious. "Postpone?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"Let me get this straight. You postponed SlayerFest '04? To…"

"There might be some renegotiations this year."

"The hell! Aren't you taking this UN gig of yours a little too seriously? What the hell were you thinking - negotiate? This isn't some peace treaty shit. We could have moved in, wiped everyone out."

"Sure. If you could find every member of the consortium."

"It's a freaking consortium?"

"Consortium for the establishment and support of SlayerFest Annual," he informed her. "They're quite organized and professional about these things."

"I'm sorry, I'm still lost somewhere up where you said there's still going to be more SlayerFests. Who made _you_ negotiator?"

"Hey! I had to go to enough client meetings in Sunnydale to know how to deal."

"Great job making them stop and desist."

Xander glared at her like he couldn't believe she'd expected more from him. "I convinced them to delay it, didn't I?"

"So they can come out after the girls this year. What a marvelous plan. Might as well paint targets on all our foreheads..." Faith breathed out, closed her eyes. Then in a tone that finally said she got it: "You're selling us out. You told them you know where everyone is. You're going to give them a list."

Xander didn't react to her at all, which was confirmation in itself.

"Well, I'll be damned. Which part are you playing? Disgruntled, under-appreciated wise-ass not getting enough respect? Or underpaid weasel not getting his worth?"

"You can't have one or the other," Xander replied. "It's gotta be both."

"You pulled it off, did you?"

"Wasn't no SlayerFest '04, was there?"

"No, no there wasn't. Aren't you full of surprises." Faith chuckled. "You still should have told us. What if we'd found out that you're betraying us and tried to take you out without asking first?"

"Giles knows. We discussed it over Christmas." Xander left out the bit where Giles had something of a conniption after being told about it. Lord ... how Giles had gone on and on about 'unnecessary risks' and 'ill-conceived bravado'. Xander didn't know why Giles had to be so particular. Giles knew the SlayerFest had been postponed; hadn't Giles wondered _how_ Xander could have won the postponement?

"Anyway, it'd be pretty tardy of you guys if I did do this for real and nobody found out and stopped me. Or maybe you guys wouldn't believe I'd have the brains to sell you out?"

"I might believe you were _stupid_ enough to sell us out," Faith said, which elicited a snort from Xander. He stood corrected. "But I don't know if anyone else would believe _me_. I'm just ... well ... a sting operation. I wouldn't have thought."

"Actually it was just about making sure they weren't going to go after the girls in Africa. Willow could tell me where the Slayers were but I didn't have time to get to all of them. Quiet negotiations with the organizers seemed like the order of the day."

Which was a nice way to sugarcoat the fact that he'd been dragged unceremoniously into the organizers' hideout and told to start talking before the sharp-clawed pink George to his right decided to start playing with his head while it was still attached to his neck.

"Well, you did what you had to do. We'll coordinate now - what's the plan?"

"Giles is thinking about it." Xander had proposed the plan, but Giles was sitting on it. Giles wouldn't even say what he found objectionable about Xander's plan. Aside from the little detail that Xander had planned it all without consulting Giles or any of the other members of the Council; admittedly that wasn't very nice or team-spirited of him. But Xander'd spent many sleepless nights turning the plan over and over in his mind, considering and reconsidering every angle, sourcing out every possible eventuality, calculating every likelihood of success, probing for any and every flaw. It was a thorough plan. Giles said that he'd get back to Xander about it, but Giles still hadn't.

"Giles." Faith coughed. "Just between you and me, we can handle this better than old tweedycoats. I'll have a group ready; I'll lead. Just lay it out for me." She tilted her head to appraise him. "This is a dangerous game you're playing. You screw this up - you know _everyone_ is going to want your hide."

"And that's remarkable - how?" Xander joked, hiding his surprise that Faith should turn out to be his ally.

Faith carried on. "I'm guessing you only want senior girls in your list? I have a few in mind. They'll be ready to act as bait to trap at least one SlayerFest hunter each. We're also going to have to take out the guys you talk to so nobody leaves a trail that goes back to you. This is going to be massive. This shit better work. The guys you 'negotiated' with - they know who you are?"

Xander nodded. "I'm a Watcher named Andrew."

Her mouth fell open. "Andrew?"

"They heard there's an Andrew in the Council but they don't know him." Her mouth was still agape. "What? I wasn't going to give them my real name."

Her expression resolved into one of genuine admiration. "You _are_ full of surprises, Harris."

"Thank you." He reckoned he should at least feel some measure of guilt about putting Andrew's life and reputation at risk, without Andrew's knowledge, even. Well. That guilty feeling should come along, sooner or later.

"But what's the big deal?" Faith asked.

"Huh?"

"So you lied to some demon spawns about your role in the Council. If we pull this off and if you don't get your ass creamed then this will be a great win for our side. I can get the secrecy about the planning, but what's the deal with 'questionable stuff'?"

Xander hadn't expected Faith to keep prying at that. "There were just things I had to do so that we could get the Slayers on our side. There were days when I wasn't getting anywhere by telling the truth."

"So? Not everyone's ready for the truth."

"The girls always knew. They already knew that things had changed for them. But some of them still had their families, and their families weren't too crazy about letting their daughters go."

And that was what Xander hated most - that the girls had to lose their families. Either to actual loss when the demons and monsters naturally gravitated to where the Slayers lived, or to forced separation when Xander had to send them on to their designated Watchers.

Faith said, "I get that. I remember Buffy telling me about her mom freaking out on her. Joyce learned to deal ... eventually. I guess you can't really blame some of those parents. The truth is pretty far out there. So it bugged you to lie. You brought the girls in. We have to get all the girls in."

Xander remembered Buffy's mom freaking out because Buffy had not come home. At the end of the day, Buffy's mom hadn't cared about what the truth was; she just wanted Buffy to come home again.

And suddenly, just because he felt like rocking Faith's sense about how the world worked beyond the borders that she knew of, he revealed, "I had to buy them. I had to buy girls."

He immediately regretted it. Faith's shock was evident - she may have seen and learned a lot of things in her years as a Slayer and as a killer, but she'd clearly never considered real world economics. But there was no point in making her wiser, and worse, he'd actually blurted out the very thing he'd never wanted to tell.

When she found her tongue she was quivering, livid. "Wait. Am I getting this right? You paid money for girls?"

He couldn't take back what he'd already said, so all he could do now was clarify. He made no attempt to be defensive. "I paid the parents after I told them that I was finding jobs for the girls."

Because it had been easier in those cases to just let the money do the talking.

Faith gasped. "You used Council money?"

"They are Slayers, ours, so yes, I used Council money."

"How much?"

"Four hundred," he said, as he thought back to one particular case. He added for specificity, "U.S."

"Four hundred thousand dollars? That's what a girl costs?"

"Four hundred dollars. Two girls. They were sisters. Very unique, according to Willow, to have two Slayer sisters in the same family." And because the sisters were so unique they were slated to be the inaugural targets for SlayerFest '04. Ironically, the SlayerFest schedule was what kept the girls alive and unharmed, in time for Xander to locate them and remove them from their village. After which he wrangled the rescheduling of SlayerFest.

"What the fuck did the parents think you were going to do with their girls?" Faith demanded.

"Get them jobs. Work them as maids. I don't know. I don't think they were thinking anything else." Well, he hoped they hadn't been, only to sell him their daughters anyway. He'd like to hold on to some shred of illusion that Man wasn't all doomed.

"But two hundred a girl!" Faith exclaimed. "If you had to resort to slave trading then you could have given them more."

Xander bristled at the accusation, well-deserved though it was. "And what's going to happen to the rest of the girls in that village? Everyone was gonna wanna start 'getting jobs' for their daughters. Two hundred was the going rate. I wasn't going inflate it."

"You _bought_ girls."

"I said I'm not proud of it, right."

Now he was angry that he'd started talking in the first place. Faith shouldn't have asked. No one else knew. Each of the times he'd send an urgent e-mail to Andrew asking for money, but he never explained why, and although Andrew dashed off many an e-mail filled with a dozen questions, Xander never bothered to reply once he had the cash in hand.

He swallowed his self-loathing and irritation at Faith, and grabbed his backpack to check the video camera for the eleventh time. His fingers were so stiff and numb that he was unsure how he was even going to hold the camera when the time came.

Faith stayed silent for a few more minutes, then stood up, pulled her coat tight, and wandered over to his tombstone. He was trying to confirm that the camera would still work despite the cold. She stared down at the cache of items he'd brought and left on the spot where Roger Walter Simonsen Jr.'s visitors would lay flowers for him. She picked something up.

"You brought the tripod?"

He glanced at her and grunted, not seeing the need to give an actual answer when she was already holding the tripod in question.

"Want to put the camera on its tripod?"

He thought about it, then shrugged. Why not. He slid off his tombstone, winced at a pulled muscle, then whooshed as he discovered how cold cold was. If he survived this night, he was going to go to buy himself an overcoat. Thick, waterproof overcoat. And then he was going to use the change to buy better thermal underwear. Sometimes it didn't pay to shop discounts.

Faith helpfully saved the camera from his shaky grasp, and waited. When he was reasonably capable of shuffling along, they picked a spot that was out of the way enough that the camera wouldn't be in the way of any fighting, then set about snapping clasps open, extending rods, locking clasps in place. They worked quietly together; they hadn't argued, but it still felt like an unspoken truce. Once satisfied that the tripod was stable on the ground, Xander screwed the camera into place, switched it on, whispered a prayer of gratitude when it whirred softly to life, and checked the focus.

Faith positioned herself at the foot of the consecrated grave and stood there with her arms crossed. She was a little to the side but still in frame - not because she was trying to get into frame, he didn't think, but because she thought she was out of frame. She watched as he coerced his stiff fingers to fiddle awkwardly with this setting and that setting, a crooked smile of amusement on her face. He couldn't imagine what was going through her mind.

He saw something in the display screen that made him pause. He had repositioned Faith to the center of the frame. Her eyes were on him as he worked, which meant she was actually looking right into the lens, and there was steam rising up behind her, in a recreation of a retro '80s MTV rock video: the chick-with-attitude standing ready to belt her lungs out to the jangled tune of crashing drums and electric guitar riffs, just waiting for her cue, out on a steaming sidewalk in New York, and ... there, right there, was a hand punching through the earth and reaching up into the sky...

He straightened up. Oh shit.

He jammed his thumb on the 'Record' button, waited just long enough to confirm that it was recording, and ran towards Faith, who was already turning around. She had her stake out as Xander skidded to a stop. He wavered whether to grab his stake or the crossbow or the axe, then settled for the stake. He didn't trust his fingers to handle a crossbow tonight, the axe would be too much to handle, and he was hoping Faith would be quick - vampire rise, parry, thrust, stake. Since he wasn't in charge of filming anymore, he could back her up right here. Assuming his fingers didn't betray him and make him drop his stake.

They stood side by side and waited, and Xander chanced a look back at the camera to make sure they weren't blocking the shot.

Kennedy propelled the rest of her way through and upward. Instead of wasting time struggling to pull herself out of the earth the way vampires did, she leapt out in a back flip.

"Are they supposed to do that?" he stage-whispered to Faith.

Judging from the wide-eyed way Faith was staring, he guessed that grave leavers weren't supposed to do that.

Not good. Xander looked at the camera, trying to spot the tell-tale flashing red light that indicated that it was recording all this. He should have flipped the display screen around, but he wasn't sure he would've been able to see anything from this distance anyway. He didn't want to leave Faith alone. A united front against Kennedy might be a good preamble to the hard fight that was coming.

Kennedy had landed safely on her feet just beyond her own tombstone. Considering parts of her were steaming, she remained quite calm as she turned to look at her audience. Her face contorted into a snarl.

"You. What were you trying to do? Holy water? You bastards burned me!"

Xander tried a cocky grin which felt more like a grimace. "Hello to you too."

Kennedy was still steaming, but unfortunately, she wasn't screaming or howling in sacramented pain. Vampire Kennedy either had a very high pain threshold, or the Good Guys were back to the drawing board to scratch out that seemingly bright idea about Minimizing the Rising Impact of a Slayer Turned Vampire. Beside him, Faith stood tense and ready.

"Yo Smokey," Faith taunted. "We've been waiting all night. You took your time."

"Someone," Kennedy sneered, "poured holy water all over my final resting place. That slowed things down."

"We were hoping that it would've stopped things, if you really want the truth," Xander said, suddenly feeling a hysterical urge to be a stickler for accuracy. He'd been through a lot and seen a lot, but Kennedy standing there with steam rising off of her was ranking as a very significantly disconcerting thing.

Kennedy lifted her hands as though to study them, and Xander saw ruined fingernails and blistered flesh. He almost quailed in expectation of the smell of charred skin, but there was no such scent. There was no breeze by which to gauge whether they were downwind or upwind, but either way, he was fairly sure that there should be the smell of _something_. The skin of her face was smooth, however, and her long hair was only slightly mussed.

"Holy water. That was a good idea," Kennedy said in a manner that told Xander she was preparing to mock them by explaining just how much it was not a good idea. "How lucky that I know the Healing Spell."

"Healing spell," Faith echoed. She looked ready to start smacking things. "What healing spell?"

"The one that's healing me now." Kennedy showed her unblemished palms to them. "The one that Willow taught me."

Faith swore under her breath. "Vampires can do magic? Fuck."

He seconded that, only without uttering it aloud. He was tongue-tied. He stared. Standing there under the moonlight, dressed in the clothes that Willow had laid out, with the silver white bouncing off the snow and illuminating her like she was a centerpiece exhibit, Kennedy was astonishingly beautiful in a way he'd never noticed in life. She was not unattractive, but he'd never given her a second glance. For one thing she was Willow's girlfriend, and he wasn't getting into the habit of checking out Willow's girlfriends, but there was also the fact that she was a brunette like Cordelia and Faith, only nowhere as stunning as Cordelia or Faith. He'd also thought of her as brash and tactless - qualities that never actually put him off girls; but where Cordy and Anya had had their endearing qualities in spite of their tactlessness, he never saw anything endearing in Kennedy. She'd simply been rude and bossy.

But she had been Willow's lover, up till the day they broke up after Christmas. As he stared at her now, he suddenly understood the beauty Willow must have seen, and he could imagine Willow and Kennedy being happy together in Brazil. And he finally empathized with how hard breaking up had been for Willow. Unfortunately he could guess that he was also about to see the Evil in Kennedy canceling out the brilliant impact of post-death gorgeousness.

"They sent you," Kennedy said, staring disdainfully at Faith, then shifted her gaze to Xander. "And you." That was an oceanful of derision there, just for him. "Xander. Xander Harris. Willow's first love. How sweet. The one she still turns to when everything goes wrong. Did she cry on your shoulder? Did she weep at my funeral?"

Xander sighed inwardly. This was going to drag. He should have known he'd live to regret not picking the crossbow.

"Does she mourn me? Cry to the heavens? Does she whisper to you how much she misses me in her bed?"

"Could you just give us the list, or are we going to have to stand here the rest of the night while you monolog _questions_?"

Kennedy leered at Faith. "Oh, I suppose I should be honored to have you here. The second oldest surviving Slayer." Kennedy made it crystal clear what she thought about the 'old', and how little she thought about 'surviving'.

"Nothing to do with honor," Faith said with a shrug. "Nothing personal either. Just time to put you down."

"You always were cocky." Kennedy sniffed the air. "Just two of you? And one of you is Xander, so that doesn't even count."

Xander was indignant. "Hey!"

"Alone against me. _Very_ cocky."

"I'm carrying the stake," Faith countered. "What'd you got? And anyway, you always were a bit ... sloppy."

Kennedy growled and was about to let loose her diatribe when Xander interrupted.

"Ladies, if I may. I know this is kind of a significant showdown: Faith the Vampire Slayer vs. Kennedy the Vampire who was Formerly a Slayer; and there's usually gotta be all this talking before the Slaying, and I hate to break tradition but -"

He held up both hands, with his stake held gingerly between his palms. It was the only way he could keep from dropping it. He nodded at Faith, and then at Kennedy, who, ignoring the vexed expression on her face, seemed serenely unaffected by Cleveland winter. He indicated at himself with his stake.

"Very, _very_ cold here. So ... could we just skip all the talking and get to the fighting?"

Faith frowned at him, as though he'd just made her lose her rhythm. He always thought of Faith as being a quick to the kill type Slayer; he never knew that she actually _liked_ bantering with her demons. He made a mental note to remember that for a possible next time.

Kennedy glared at him in a way that should have caused him to combust spontaneously where he stood if only she knew the right spells for it.

He took a step back at the same time that Faith began to circle the grave, away from him. She was probably trying to draw Kennedy's attention towards her, but Kennedy knew better. She'd always been the smart, impulsive one, after all. She'd believed in going all out and poking at the weak spot.

Kennedy went right for Xander.

She was fast. He didn't see how she got to be right in front of him because he'd been in the act of turning to get to the axe. Kennedy the Vampire snarled in his face. He tried to slam his stake into her breast, but she side-stepped him easily, sniggering in his ear. He barely had time to regain his balance when she elbowed him in the chest. His heart must have slammed to a stop, and he forgot how to breathe.

Pure instinct told him to drop himself to the ground; he still had enough grasp of strategy to guess that Kennedy would want to use him as a shield against Faith. Once on the ground Xander had enough wits left to roll himself out of the way.

By then Faith had Kennedy. He could hear the Slayers duking it out while he lay trembling on his side, his left cheek sunk into the snow, as he tried hard to learn to breathe. The sharp ache that the cold forced into the left side of his face finally forced him to move again. His hair and eye-patch were thoroughly soaked - he was going to have a hell of a headache for the rest of tonight and tomorrow, assuming he made it out of this cemetery alive; from the sounds of the fighting there was no conclusive outcome yet. He gathered enough strength to prop himself up on shaky arms. He was breathing in shallow pants, and the frosty air scraped his throat raw and bit into his lungs.

He was just in time to see the dust.

"Oh God, Willow," he murmured in sympathy.

There was a bout of dizziness as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. He squeezed his eye shut, tried to think happy thoughts that didn't have anything to do with the death of exes. Not working. He kept thinking about how Kennedy had died. He didn't know precisely _how_ she could have lost and died, because he hadn't gone patrolling with any of the girls anymore after the incident that got his shoulder dislocated. He knew Kennedy had been the senior Slayer accompanying three junior girls out for a routine patrol cum night time tour of Cleveland. At some point, the group split into pairs and ventured into this very cemetery for one last look-see before returning home. Then came three vampires, and that shouldn't have been a problem for someone like Kennedy. But sometimes mistakes happened. Mistakes could always happen.

He wished the mistake hadn't happened during Kennedy's watch. She deserved better. Willow deserved better. But if it hadn't been for Kennedy then three young Slayers might've been lost that night. There was just never such a thing as a clean win.

He heard Faith dragging her feet through the snow to where he was.

"You okay?"

He opened his eye and looked up at her. She had a shiner blooming on the left side of her face, her hair was a mess, her gloves were gone, her overcoat was missing, and her sweater was ripped in a couple of places. There was blood on her jeans too. Behind her, the snow around Kennedy's and adjoining graves had been churned into slosh. Xander had had the front row seat for what must have been one hell of a showdown, the stuff of legends, and he'd missed the whole damned thing.

"She sure knew how to make a lot of owww," he croaked.

Faith blew hair out of her mouth and crouched down in front of him. "Uhuh. I think she learned some new moves in Brazil. I've never had anyone try to kick my spine out that way." Faith squeezed her fingers along her limbs, feeling for sprains or breaks. "And I think she was trying to cheat. With magic."

"She did magic?"

"She tried. I kept having to hit her in the mouth so she couldn't start with the chanting."

Xander let his gaze slide down to Faith's bare hands where he saw the split knuckles. He bit his lip and nodded to let her know he was deeply into feeling what she was feeling. For a while the only sounds to be heard were of the two of them breathing - Xander trying to get his back to normal; Faith panting as she cooled down. He used the base of his palm to knead his breastbone. He winced, but if anything had cracked or shattered he imagined it would hurt him about tenscore more that it did.

"You sure you're okay?" Faith asked. Since she was the one who looked like a bedraggled abuse victim, her question to him sounded almost ridiculous.

He managed a reply. "Just checking that my heart is where it's supposed to be."

"Robin did say that might be a problem."

"Robin, huh?" He sincerely hoped she wasn't going to start with Robin again. It'd been an understandable therapeutic way to pass the time while trying to not think about waiting to kill Kennedy all over again, but now any such conversation would just be in bad taste. Then again, life went on, didn't it? All they'd done was dust another vampire tonight. Just another night's work.

"Robin used to advocate that we teach the girls how to modulate their strength when dealing with ordinary people. A Slayer doing unrestrained CPR on somebody could turn the situation very ... messy."

Xander grimaced. That Robin - so smart. "You can tell him he's right."

Faith offered her hand. He grabbed it and almost yelped at how cold it was. She stood up and pulled him along with her. She limped away to fetch the Sony handycam while he shivered where he stood with his hands tucked under his armpits. His chest was really hurting. He considered the possibility of internal bleeding, and the irony that almost two years after saving her life in Caleb's First hidey-hole, Kennedy might be the death of him after all.

Then Faith returned with the camera. She held on to the tripod, handed the camera over. She watched as he thumbed off the switch.

"Aren't you gonna check the footage?"

He looked around for the backpack, finally spotted that it was conveniently but silently waiting right by his foot, and proceeded to keep the camera snugly in it. "You know what we were talking about just now, how it feels a little too much like being a serial killer?" He gave the bag a light heave for emphasis before zipping it up. "Watching it would really be just a little too much more than too much, you know?"

Faith gave a curt nod. "Yes, but well, it's evidence. I hope it's all there. Just in case..."

She trailed off and didn't press the issue. Xander kept his silence. He felt like they should be saying a second eulogy for Kennedy, but that was absurd. The vampire Faith had just dusted was a demon with Kennedy-face. That was all it was. He and Faith both knew that, and that was why they were the ones here to do the job. The tape they had now was simply proof that Xander and Faith had done what had to be done. It was disquieting that they even had to be ready with proof, but he knew better than anyone that a hundred and one consequences were waiting for them as a direct result of tonight, and if visual evidence was going to be something anyone asked for, then they had it. For better or worse.

He wondered how much time was needed to cook up an apocalypse in Cleveland, and if he'd even see it coming. Then he mentally smacked himself for being so distrustful of his dearest, truest friend. Okay, she had that prior record, but it wasn't fair to keep using that against her. Things were different this time.

Faith had no qualms about going for the worst possible scenario. "What if Willow's gotten hold of Kennedy's soul?"

"Don't."

"She said she wouldn't -"

"And she isn't."

"But she could be -"

"Don't." Xander raised a stern finger in warning, kept it up. "Don't. For the love of all that is good and holy - don't. Say it."

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder at what Willow's planned for me."

"Well, neither do I. Anyway, they'd broken up."

"Like that matters?"

He didn't answer. He got down on his knees and slowly gathered the rest of the things they'd brought with them to the grave site. Faith folded the tripod, and took the axe, crossbow and arrows from him so that he could stuff everything else into the backpack. He slung the pack over his shoulder, and Faith helped him to his feet again.

"Where's your coat?" he asked, seeing her ready to just walk away as she was.

"I don't know." She motioned that she didn't care. "I had to just take it off; it was slowing me down."

"Oh. One of those fights where you have to keep removing articles of clothing." He had no idea where that came from. He could feel the urge coming now to just keep talking, partly as a way of marveling the fact that if he was still mouthing off then he _was_ still alive, and partly so that his mind wouldn't keep skittering back to what Willow was going to do about this.

Faith gave him a look that started off as reproachful, only to shift into playful. Xander wasn't particularly surprised. Faith was still Faith, after all.

"Fuck the coat," she said. "Let's get back to my apartment. Get warm. Tend to some owwws."

Such a tame come-on. He supposed she could be tired, or she could be just teasing. Or for all he knew, she was just saying what she was saying, without any hidden hints anywhere. Whichever way, he doubted she was sparing any thought about how he might possibly feel about actually getting into any situation where he was alone with her again in a room. What more a room with a bed.

"Well?" she purred. She sidled up to him, and with her free hand, reached suggestively below his belt.

Okay. Not teasing. He shied away before she could make contact.

"Robin's a friend," he said. "Maybe not close, but he's still a friend."

Faith frowned and prepared to protest, but he cut her off. "And I kinda have my own policy about not being rebound guy. Or if that sounds kind of presumptuous because you and me - so not happening; I'm just saying I don't think we wanna get into that one night bed-warming thing."

Her exasperated pissed-off scowl was impossible to read. She could be angry because he'd turned her down. She could be annoyed because he was taking her seriously when she was merely teasing. She could be frustrated because she wasn't getting whatever it was she felt she wanted.

She finally growled an abrupt, "Fine." But then she angled her face so that she was peering at him seductively from below her eyelashes. She gazed at him long enough that he had to break into a smile. "But you'd sleep with me if you didn't have all those issues."

He thought about protesting her insinuation about 'issues', not to mention the fact that his 'issues' with her were much more far-reaching, but then decided to take it in the light-hearted vein she was trying.

"Oh yeah." He nodded enthusiastically. He reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. If he could, he would have winked. "And Robin's an ass."

Faith winked for him. "Don't I know it."

They were ready to go when Xander sighed, shook his head, and turned back to Kennedy's besmirched grave. His chest still felt like it'd been caved in, his fingers ached badly, and there was a headache snaking its way from his eye socket to the center of his skull, but he let his backpack drop to the ground and began to push displaced dirt and snow into the hole Kennedy had burrowed from below. Faith joined him, and they did the best they could.

It was all dirty sludge when they were done, but the earth had been filled. Kennedy had been staked right atop her own grave. Dust to dust. Xander hoped it would snow. He wouldn't even mind how he couldn't afford to get any colder. He wanted it to start snowing now. Let the snow recreate everything into something pristine.

If Willow thought to visit, then there would be this grave to visit.

Faith broke the silence. "Are you telling her?"

"She knows." He looked at her and she met his eye. She didn't pretend that she wasn't worried.

He was no longer pretending that he wasn't afraid.

They picked up their scattered things and left the silent moonlit graves behind.

The End


End file.
